


Runner

by manhattan



Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Main Video Game Series), Pocket Monsters: Black & White | Pokemon Black and White Versions
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Character Study, Getting Together, M/M, Running Away, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-20
Updated: 2019-12-20
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:35:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,223
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21873064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/manhattan/pseuds/manhattan
Summary: Touya could have been a hunter, if he hadn’t been born in a world full of easy buttons and electric commodities. This is what N thinks the day a hand closes around his arm and pulls him into a step back— and, ah, Touya’s eyes are crackling, that brown like a sizzling ember.
Relationships: N | Natural Harmonia Gropius/Touya | Hilbert
Comments: 5
Kudos: 57
Collections: 2019 Pokémon Holiday Exchange





	Runner

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Mimca](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mimca/gifts).



> hello! i’ll be using the japanese names for the PC because the requester used them. this fic turned out a little angsty, as i focused on the “N is not exactly a Good Person” part of the prompt (and it is my personal headcanon that N has much to learn before he is a Decent Boy). please enjoy! i really hope you like it!
> 
> prompt: “Unapologetic Gen V fan here. I'm okay with any rating except Explicit. Can be any kind of relationship between Touya & N, Touko & N, all three of them, just exploring their relation (N is not exactly a Good Person). Others characters are fine too. Thank you, dear secret gifter :)”

_Runner_ _  
_ _I know you're living with a wild hunger_ _  
_ _Let me make the most of us_ _  
_ _You know you'll never be a runner_ _  
_ _And leave me in a cloud of dust_

_Living in the same old sin_ _  
_ _I feel it blowing in the wind_ _  
_ _Like manna in the desert, oh_ _  
_ _Gonna take a miracle_

**Tennis** — Runner

* * *

Touya could have been a hunter, if he hadn’t been born in a world full of easy buttons and electric commodities. This is what N thinks the day a hand closes around his arm and pulls him into a step back— and, ah, Touya’s eyes are crackling, that brown like a sizzling ember.

Around them, the meadow sighs and exhales with the passing wind, a wave of dark-green buds and blinding white snow. Touya’s face is almost just as pale, and N remembers him differently: more fleshed out, softer. It must be from the winter sunlight, turning curves into juts of bone, and wanting brown into hateful hazel.

“You—” Touya hisses, between the points of his teeth, and his fist is cold when it hits N’s face, each of his knuckles like a bite.

Blood is warm, at least, and N sucks at his lip before he thinks of it, relishing the copper. Touya’s eyes follow the movement like a hound to prey.

“You,” N echoes, looking down at Touya. “It’s good to see you.”

He isn’t sure if he means it, but there is no time for second-guessing.

They end up crushing the flowers before the daisies ever get the chance to see spring, a splay of rigid elbows and moving knees, and the snow under their boots lies warm-pink when they’re done. 

Touya’s chest is heaving as he climbs onto a sitting position, and now N remembers just how beautiful this boy is when he wins. This, at least, hasn’t changed: the allure of victory. 

“Why are you here, Touya?” N asks, craning his neck to see better. Flower stems crinkle and snap under the weight of his skull, and, once upon a time, N might’ve felt guilty.

“I don’t know,” Touya replies, and buries his head in his hands.

* * *

Sunset finds them in a shoddy camp. Neither of them have tents: N finds that he enjoys the discomfort of nature, and Touya, well, N doesn’t know about Touya.

“We could’ve been friends,” Touya says, voice washed like a bleached rag, all clinical and irritating to the core. The statement is as full of itself as Touya says N is, and N supposes the two of them always _were_ a bit alike, in the end.

Or maybe he asks. Is he asking? Sometimes people makes questions without the final point, the lilt, but N has never understood why. So, is Touya asking? If he is, does he want an answer, or does he only want to expose the possibility? That somewhere along the line, perhaps if they were just a little less stubborn, or if things were just a little more different—

“Could we?” N replies, because he has never liked wishing, and some hypotheses are meant to be nulled at the very start of an experiment.

Touya does not reply. 

He only stacks the wood and fumbles for the matches, and that’s that.

* * *

They leave Floaroma behind as snow falls, covering their battlegrounds like a bandage. By the time spring comes, there will be nothing left of their presence, and even that thought has dissipated once Eterna’s asphalt roads crack under their feet.

The buildings remind N of Castelia, though they conceal no alleys or shaded stores. If he focuses enough, he is back there, feeling the barely-there brush of shoulders as people marched past, eyes looking ahead without seeing. Sinnoh is slower, steadier, and people look N in the eyes when he enters a room.

He is still unsure whether he enjoys it or not.

“—sharing one, yes,” Touya is saying, rummaging through his bag for his ID.

The nurse looks away from N, glittering eyes like little stones, and returns her attention to the screen. The clicks of her keyboard are interspersed with sideways glances at the two of them, but her polite silence allows them a nondescript entry into their room.

Inside a building, Touya suddenly feels closer. N is standing at the door when he realizes this, watching Touya’s shoulders rise and fall as layers of his clothes roll open over the mattress. It’s close, even if there are steps of space between them, even if they aren’t even touching.

Touya’s breath is even as he strips, as he dresses, as he picks the bottom bunk without a word. N has never shared a room before – it is starkly different from sharing a cave, or the underspace of a wide old tree. No, N knows these things. But concrete and tile mesh into such a private picture, so unnatural, and he finds that the back of his neck feels hot.

“What?” Touya asks, pausing halfway into taking off his socks. They’re worn, nearly transparent at the heel.

N wouldn’t know how to even begin explaining. So he doesn’t; he only shakes his head and follows the motions of domesticity, repeating after Touya.

The stairs to the upper bunk creak under his weight. His neck stays warm.

* * *

They don’t talk much as they travel. Touya has yet to crack a smile or an easy-going joke (the way he did before, the way he did with his real friends, the way he did before N turned his back on him and left Unova behind), and N was never taught the formula for a successful friendship.

Still, Touya doesn’t leave. Which – it’s obvious, of course, why would he, after spending all this time chasing after N? But it’s confusing, too. N would ask, but Touya has yet to answer any of his questions with anything approaching civility.

So, no. They don’t talk much.

The forest behind Eterna’s cityline fills in the blanks with chirping bug pokémon and the soft whirr of the leaves. It could almost be Pinwheel Forest, if N crossed his eyes a little, if the world chose to unfocus. It could almost be Pinwheel Forest, if the pokémon here were just a little chattier, a little noisier.

N has other trainer’s pokémon for conversation, at least. Touya’s battle style hasn’t changed, and, while the former champion lines his pocket, N asks: how are you feeling? Are you well? Do you love your trainer?

And the answers are absolute positives, through and through. N still hasn’t learned how to disguise his surprise, even after all this time, and isn’t that sad?

“Ghetsis lied to you.” It is the kindest thing Touya has said since finding N. “It’s time you realize that, and move on.”

“There will always be bad people,” N replies, setting his palm on the moss, feeling its miniscule grooves and leaves brush against his flesh. “My— he may have lied about everything else, but he was right about that.”

Touya’s eyes are dark in the shade, penetrating and sad, and he just stands there and waits for N to rise to his feet once more. The knees of his pants are mottled with crushed grass, damply stained.

“So, what,” Touya tries again, cynicism souring his tongue, “will you waste your life trying to find bad people?”

N pauses, staring down at his friend – is he? – and that heat flares back to life, slipping down his back and settling in his stomach, and N smiles.

“I dare say you can’t judge me, my friend,” N says, and watches Touya’s face go flushed, either with anger or embarrassment. “After all,” he adds, and both of them are very aware of the years that have passed since the castle, since their goodbye, “isn’t that what you’re doing?”

Touya’s hands grip at N’s collar, white knuckles and creasing fabric, and his voice is a snarl, a hiss, a sound that N has grown so accustomed to hearing from wild pokémon—

“No,” Touya says, breath warm against N’s, and he sounds like he believes it. “No,” he repeats, “that isn’t what I’m doing.”

The kiss – hot, stubborn, almost violent – is over before N realizes its meaning. N barely even knows what it _is_ , at first, but he is no longer the sheltered young man he was.

“Do you get it?” Touya asks. He licks the spit-shine off his lower lip, and his hands grip at N’s shoulders like vices. “Do you _get_ it?”

What is there to get? What makes a gesture an answer? It’s not mathematical; it’s not clear. It offers no solution. If anything, it only complicates the equation. 

Despite this, N says: “I get it,” and, somehow, he does.

Touya’s eyes darken as he leans again, molten ember giving way, and then there is only the sound of wind, of leaves, of bugs, all quiet— or maybe the sound of blood as it rushes through N’s head, unbearably loud, and the underlying harmony of a kiss. 

* * *

Under the falling snow, N finds that he misses the warmth of his hair against his back. Touya does not. At least, this is what N thinks, evaluating the way Touya looks and looks. At least, this is what N thinks, the moment Touya finally asks:

“When did you cut it?” The question echoes in the rock, taking on a weight that Touya probably didn’t mean.

N isn’t sure. It would be easier to say why: because there were pictures of him all over the media, because a man with such long hair is easy to identify, because he’d never thought to do so, and because his father had never allowed it before.

But that isn’t the question. 

“After— well.” N shows a smile, here, practiced so diligently. “You aren’t the only one chasing after me, Touya.”

Touya’s eyes drift. A sullen curve downhill, from the nape of N’s uncovered neck to his hands, intertwined. But Touya’s ears are pink in the firelight, flesh almost as bright as his eyes. He looks— it dawns on N, for some mysterious reason, that they haven’t kissed after the forest.

“It suits you,” Touya says, oblivious to N’s realization. It sounds like a forced confession, the way he mumbles it, the way he hunches over to hide his face.

If Touya had cut his hair, N thinks, perhaps this would be the proper time to say, _you too_. But Touya looks the same, at least superficially, even if his flesh is more drawn out and his cheekbones have sharpened. Is this what anger does to a person? Or grief? N’s own face has tightened, too— the pictures on the police boards show a different person now.

“You look the same,” N decides.

It’s the wrong thing to say. The cave seems to lose its hard-earned heat, and only allows the smoke to stay.

“I’m not,” Touya replies, all of him bitter, and finally looks away.

“Oh. Do you blame me?” N asks, and he might even feel a little surprised. “We parted on good terms, I thought.”

“Maybe you did,” Touya replies. “But then, it was always about you, wasn’t it?”

N can’t find in himself to refute that. The heat returns, now, as Touya stabs at the fire with a lone stick. The wood stills smells green, wet, and this is something N wouldn’t have known before. But the hardships of life and regret have taught him well, since then. 

There are no more castles for someone like N.

“I thought,” Touya says, half-monologue, “I thought that once I found you, I’d know what— I thought things would make sense.”

Wood crackles hotly between their feet. Touya sets the stick down, the end fuming.

“We said our goodbyes,” N says. It is a question inside a statement.

“Maybe you did,” Touya replies, and turns over to sleep, or pretend.

* * *

Snowpoint is melting when they arrive, pine trees dripping happily. The spring sun washes over their chill and leaves only the exhaustion, so they stomp over to the pokécenter first. 

Touya stares at the distant shipyard, a picture of metal cranes and crates. He stares until the center doors have slid shut behind them and the nurse hurriedly directs them to the coat-hangers.

“I’ve never been to Kanto,” Touya says, eyes on the television. The volume is too low for N to make out what they’re saying, but it seems to be an advertisement for pokémon food pellets.

“Neither have I,” N returns, even if he is capable of understanding what Touya means.

They could get on a ship. They could keep running. Is N selfish enough to try and forget Touya has a family, that he has friends, that he will be missed? What does it say of him that he is conscious of this, and would like to not be?

“Do you want to go?” Touya presses, eyes on the television.

They could get on a ship. They could go back home.

“Do you?” N asks back.

And N could repent. Or at least try to. Even if it scares him.

“I do,” Touya says, and now he _does_ look at N, those brown eyes searing. “Do you?”

They could—

* * *

They get on a ship as dawn breaks.

N thinks of tenacious hunters, of steady, unrelenting domestication, and skims through the brochure Touya gives him.


End file.
